Lipreading

The practice of understanding spoken language by visually interpreting the movements of a speaker's lips, tongue, teeth, jaw, and facial expression. Lipreading is used by many Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people — especially those who acquired hearing loss after learning spoken language or who communicate primarily in spoken English — as a supplement to hearing aids, cochlear implants, or captions. It is inherently ambiguous (many English phonemes look identical on the lips) and requires good lighting, unobstructed view of the speaker's face, and familiarity with the speaker's accent and style. Masks, poor video quality, automated avatars without natural mouth movements, and side-profile camera angles all undermine lipreading access, which is why caption parity remains essential even when lipreading is possible.